aFish..........especially that native brook trout dry fly game where alot of times that one good cast has to count , just one chance , don't blow it , reading water most of the time with the occasional sighted fish but rarely , put it up in that plunge pool , with enough slack so it sits there a second or two before the current drags it outta there , BANG!! man i love that , i think a few more of you folks do too.

By the way, hodge, I hope your quest to be self-taught does not keep you from reading as much as possible, observing other anglers or even taking advice from more experienced fly anglers. Though I never took a formal lesson, all of those things contributed to my development into just enough of a hack to have a great time whenever I hit the streams. Good luck in your continued learning. There is a wealth of good and bad information here, and it is up to you to sort it out. Sometimes a blind squirrel can even teach you something important.

Posted on: 2010/10/20 9:46

_________________I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

I have been fishing A LOT. I have caught some fish, mostly trout and a few steelhead. I can relate to the blind squirrel thing because i took my friend out for his first time and he was catching fish left and right, of coarse not me though.

gfen.........reading Leonard Wrights stuff changed my fly fishing life forever , he writes like your sittin beside a camp fire with him. Some of the coolest info ever came from reading his stuff "The Sudden inch" has caught me a ton of trout and the part about a skid that's under control is just awesome info.

osprey wrote:gfen.........reading Leonard Wrights stuff changed my fly fishing life forever , he writes like your sittin beside a camp fire with him. Some of the coolest info ever came from reading his stuff "The Sudden inch" has caught me a ton of trout and the part about a skid that's under control is just awesome info.

Someone once coined the word Presentation to mean something in relation to trout fishing, but I've yet to see anyone suffiently define the word as it relates to trout fishing.In the simplest of terms it is getting the fly in front of trout in a way that we assume looks natural to the trout. The key is in the assumption of what looks real to trout. Unless we observe trout feeding from their view we have no idea what triggers the eating of food. In fact in videos I've seen trout take lots of stuff into their mouths only to spit it out, even flies on the end of a line that has a strike indicator (bobber). So I can't define the word presentation for you, but I did learn something on my recent trip to Maine, STOP doing things that don't catch trout. And concentrate on things that worked for you. If you do something enough and it works you'll gain confidence in it and will keep doing it until it stops working then try something else.For instance Many folks will tell you that eliminating drag (presentation) will catch you more trout, but there are times when imparting some action into a dry fly will be the only thing that works on a given day. People will tell you that brook trout don't care about drag, but I've fished brook trout streams in certain conditions when they completely ignored any fly that had drag on it. The fly had to have a perfect executed cast and a perfect landing and drift for the brook trout to take. Then on other streams they would only take a streamer, won't take a dry fly unless there is a major hatch in progress. Hope this helps.

Posted on: 2010/10/27 22:03

_________________
The object of a resource is to use and reuse a resource, not to use it up, have we learned nothing in over 125 years of stocking?

Afish.............i agree 100% , i'd rather catch them on top but i'll do whatever it takes , that's why my vest weighs 100lbs lol it really does , i have stuff in there , just in case , that i'll probably never use , one that comes to mind is lead core trolling line to add to your leader in sections with surgeons loops to help it sink , Clouser showed me that and i think he even gave me the length of it that's in there , never used but there just in case lol,

I agree with some of the previous posters that "presentation" is vague and probably overstated with respect to nymphing. The only aspect of presentation that I think is really important for a beginner is to present the fly at the proper level. This usually means the bottom. The other main thing you need to worry about is strike detection.

When I work with beginners struggling to nymph, the vast majority of the time their problems boil down to not having the flies on the bottom and/or missing strikes. Use common sense. Think about what happens to your fly in the water. What prevents your fly from getting down to the fish at the bottom? If a fish does pick it up, how will that information be transmitted to you? Don't worry about active nymph presentations until you know how to detect strikes while fishing the bottom.

midnightangler..............isn't fishing a nymph dead drift on the bottom PRESENTING the nymph dead drift on the bottom? And how about the casting it takes , if water is high and muddy , to get the nymph to be on the bottom by the time it gets to the fish isn't that Presentation? You might have to cast 20" up stream and mend a few times to get the nymph to be in the right place at the right time , presentation?

osprey wrote:aFish..........especially that native brook trout dry fly game where alot of times that one good cast has to count , just one chance , don't blow it , reading water most of the time with the occasional sighted fish but rarely , put it up in that plunge pool , with enough slack so it sits there a second or two before the current drags it outta there , BANG!! man i love that , i think a few more of you folks do too.

That is a moment worth mentioning again and again. I nymph those plunge pools but I hear a description that makes a moving picture of a dry that I can see as it happens. I can even see the bang! I do believe if I could see a dry you'd convert me to dries only on that paragraph alone.

Wetnet.............brookies aren't really picky about color , usually if they think it looks like food they'll "bang" it , if your son ties or someone you know ties , get them to tie you some ultra visible flies just for that occasion , if you can't find anyone to do it for you i'll tie you a few just to try my theory out , it works , in another post PaulG refers to orange ants as WMD's and they are , how many orange ants do you see in nature? but they sure will help you see them. Let us know how my advice works out..................Osprey